Margaret Ross
ACCOUNT
Four-inch platform pumps with sequined toe
Three-inch gold stilettos with heart at the ankle
Sneakers with suede detailing and camouflaged
two-inch platform
Five-inch boots with rhinestone fringe
a hard rain down the calf
Women so rich they never remove their sunglasses
This is where we live together said the waxer
pointing to the ceiling
The table where you’re being worked is where
the masseur sleeps
A pancake for 5 RMB
Blue butterfly barrette with glitter dusted on its wings
This park where every visitor in ancient times
had to dismount and walk a long path
to the emperor’s palace
Toddlers’ sneakers made to make
an animal call with every step taken
“I’d be afraid to hire nannies,” X— says, “I only trust
blood relatives. The other moms I work with feel the same”
Everyone’s sick of walking through museums
to see the lotus shoes like lavishly embroidered fists
Black cloth mary janes keep muffling the tread of waitresses,
grocers, janitors, maids, and elderly women
A shin-high shoe store mirror for decisions
Knee-high thresholds of traditional doors
imply you split the world outside
from what you see at home
New York City, 1991:
the first day taking care of me, Z— ran in heels to chase me
too much fire in her system Z— said
and every day thereafter wore flats
Each shoe a stair from which the wearer watches
The concrete’s softer back home, I always wore heels there
Holographic slip-ons float a solar system
Mold infused with glittered PVC ejecting jelly slippers
X— all along raised by her grandmother while her mother cared for me
Looking back it seems a double image, kid I was
and absence of the kid I wasn’t
Some needs called ‘rights,’ some ‘wants,’ some ‘luxuries’
Three pairs of nylons, 30 RMB
Her socks were flesh-colored
Flip-flops cheaper than a coffee
Z—: “X— keeps spoiling her daughter and won’t
listen to me. She’s angry at me, maybe, still
because I left to work in the U.S. But that was
the eighties. I thought it was best. My granddaughter’s
so spoiled, she cries even in first class”
Some girl in crimson satin loafers buying shrimp
Baby Uggs and knockoff Baby Uggs
New Balances with N stitched backwards like a mirror image
To see my life now in reverse, to see it clearer
These Converses
I love you more than mom I said to Z—
This rabbit-hiding rhyme to teach your laces
You don’t. You don’t know what you mean
Beige combat with a star stitched on the tongue
Slingback strap across achilles tendon
Tell me a story Ayi of when you were little
Summers I’d run coins along my mother’s spine to ease the heat
Prices scrawled over a higher price in sharpie
At fifteen, X— immigrated, lived with Z—, moved out
to go to college, grad school, married, moved
and had a daughter in Shanghai her mother-in-law
takes care of in the daytime
Two points where every upright body touches earth
These soles the closest surface to antipodes
I must have asked Z— to play baby
I lay there cradled in her lap as though I was
much smaller than I was, Z— unbuttoning
her shirt, slid off her bra: baby
That was New York City, 1992, I was five
A year since Z— had touched her child
She smelled warm
We only played that once
Z— stayed until the two of us were grown
Pink rubber laser-cut with droplet pattern
This sole with traction
Steel hook underneath a for-show buckle keeps my shoe on